More cracks in the facade

The Washington Post for January 25 tells us that Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters on Saturday that his famous presentation to the UN last February 5

was based on "what our intelligence community believed was credible."

"What is the open question is how many stocks they had, if any, and if they had any, where did they go? And if they didn't have any, then why wasn't that known beforehand?" Powell told reporters aboard his plane en route to Sunday's presidential inauguration of Mikheil Saakashvili.

Waaaait a minute here. If any? Mr. Conclusive-evidence-laid-out-for-all-the-world-to-see himself is now pleading the Fifth? What gives?

Maybe there is something to "the truth will out" after all. Bit by bit, the White House has been forced by reality to back off its original claims about Iraq and banned weapons, spinning so madly the whole while that a gyroscope would be envious. The latest had been Bush's reference in his State of the Union address to "weapons of mass destruction-related programs." Now Powell, the faithful acolyte, has declared himself an agnostic, claiming that his speech to the UN only involved "questions that needed to be answered" and a "hypothesis" about nerve gas and anthrax. Nothing in the article indicated how many of the assembled reporters needed to retrieve their mandibles from the tops of their shoes.

Certainly, it would have been very hard for any rational person to maintain the true faith in the face of the resignation of David Kay, who in quitting said in an interview with Reuters that

he had concluded there were no weapons stocks to be found.

"I don't think they existed," Kay said. "What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the last (1991) Gulf War, and I don't think there was a large-scale production program in the '90s."

He also said that

he now thought that Iraq had illicit weapons at the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf war, but that the subsequent combination of United Nations inspections and Iraq's own decisions "got rid of them."

Asked directly if he was saying that Iraq did not have any large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in the country, Dr. Kay replied, according to a transcript of the taped interview made public by Reuters, "That is correct."

Even former U.N. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer, who has been chosen to take Kay's place, told PBS's "Newshour" on January 9 that the prospect "of finding chemical weapons, biological weapons is close to nil at this point."

But then again, I did say any rational person. The Post notes that

[o]n Wednesday, Vice President Cheney told National Public Radio that the administration has not given up looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. "It's going to take some additional considerable period of time in order to look in all the cubbyholes and ammo dumps and all the places in Iraq where you'd expect to find something like that," he said.

I wonder if Cheney is telling his staff that all the news is a test of their faith, a attempt by the Great Satan Demoncrats to undermine their resolve?

Footnote one: British Prime Minister Tony Blair is "facing growing pressure to say the basis for going to war in Iraq was flawed" in the wake of Kay's departure, reports the BBC.

[Former UK foreign secretary Robin] Cook, who resigned in protest at the prospect of war with Iraq, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme it was "rather undignified" of Mr Blair to continue to insist he was right when "everybody could now see he was wrong". ...

"The reality is that Number 10 was keen to get into the war, not frankly because they were particularly concerned about WMD - I suspect by March they also knew that the September document had over-egged the case - they were keen to get in to impress President Bush that they were a reliable ally."

Blair, who is thought to be more vulnerable on the issue than Bush, brushed off Kay's statement and insists WMDs will yet be found in Iraq.

Update: Tony's now doing the Downing Street Shuffle. According to Agence France-Presse, January 25,

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in an interview, said he has no doubt that pre-war intelligence about an active Iraqi quest for weapons of mass destruction was "genuine".

"Quest for." Not actual weapons, but a "quest for" them. Still trailing in George's footsteps.

Footnote two: You still occasionally read the post or hear the story that sometime this summer, just at the most opportune time for Bush, a cache of weapons will be "discovered." Don't bet on it. First, I think that if there was some sort of plot along those lines, the Bushites would have stood firmer in their predictions that yes, they will be found. Second, while it certainly would be taken as great news among the 37% of voters in a recent Newsweek poll who "strongly" want to see Bush re-elected, it certainly won't move the 47% who strongly do not want him back. As for the rest, even at this point it would look like an election-year stunt and the closer we get to the election, the more it would look that way.

Note that this doesn't mean I think they wouldn't do such a thing, only that they haven't.

(Link to Newsweek poll via The Hamster.)